


The Greeks Called her Nyx

by JohnlockAndATardis



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Apocalypse, Archdemon - Freeform, Coralee is Evil of Course, Demon!Coralee, Demons, Pre-Apocalypse, Shit goes down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 04:59:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6105693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnlockAndATardis/pseuds/JohnlockAndATardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coralee Strand has not been herself in a very long time, and before she was Coralee, she was something much different indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greeks Called her Nyx

     The Greeks called me Nyx. Before them, the Sumerians said me to be born of the smoke of the mighty Tiamat’s breath. Christianity came and I sought to hide from their gaze, but as it so often was, they found me. Here I was renamed once more. A watcher, fallen from my post when Lucifer descended into Hell. They called me one of many, and named me the Grigori. An elemental. I had never known the name of a man, but such was the form they gave to me. But I am no man, and I do not don their name. In the shadows where I exist, I have nothing, no form, no breath, only the veil of smoke and darkness from which I was born.

     But in the light, they call me Coralee.

     I do not remember when I first knew I would need to take this form. For so long I had existed without the bounds of the human understanding of time. I was as smoke and shadows must be: fluid. I wound my way throughout the passages of existence with an ease no mortal could have ever known, leaving my stain upon their memories like the creeping darkness at the edge of consciousness. I fell into the category of myth and legend for so long that even those who had first named me came to forget me. All about myself, a strange new world was being constructed, one that did not have time for the stories of old. There was much death, among those creatures who had never lived save for within the imagination of the human mind. But always, I persevered. Though I had lost my old names, I found my way to the surface. I was uncovered by scholars, as they called themselves now, when once they were philosophers. The archeologists looked upon my face and they knew awe, and they knew fear. For centuries I lived, thrived even, off of the raw human fear of the darkness.

     But they have begun to know light, and for the first time since man discovered flame and I came into being, I have begun to weaken. Their sins grow dull and sparse, their morals cementing in place with each generation. They have forgotten what it was to be truly afraid. Their gods have for too long lived, granting them a security that would promise to be my demise, their minds do not shy away from the shadows. They look fear in the eyes, they look upon me and they laugh. No longer. I have found a new path. And from the ashes I will be raised, and the creatures of the earth will slay and be slain, and by Chaos’s doing shall the Horn will be blown, and _she_ shall hear, and _they_ shall come. The one they call today the Devil will crawl forth from the broken mantle and bring with him a thousand-thousand demons, and through the sky _she_ will soar in her great and terrible form, Tiamat reborn. And all will burn. And all will be beautiful and terrible once more. There, enthroned I shall sit, and they will know the call of their death, and know their destiny is to be the demise of a race. When it is done, I shall claim the darkness for myself.

     But first, the child. She was small, wrinkled and pink as human young are, with black tufts of hair upon her head growing from an otherwise bald form. They wrapped her in blankets and swaddled her, whispering and cooing with that tone humans take with their offspring which is so sickening I left nearly the shadows, nearly let them to the rituals partaken in following the child’s birth. But I needed to know. And so I waited in the darkness with a patience that had been garnered from near constant practice. The world spun on, so much slower to the humans with their lifespans small as they were. I waited. And I waited. And I waited, as I had done the day that the Strand child had been born, as I had when I watched his father before him come into the world. But I had watched only there. Now, as the mother drifted to sleep and the father stepped out, I made my move. She was asleep in her crib, but stirred as I drew closer. Her eyes flashed open, a warm color like soil wet from a rain storm. My gaze fixed upon her, wrapped tight in her swaddling as though it might keep away all the monsters she would come to fear.

     “I see you,” I had whispered then, leant over her cradle, voice like the wind through the trees. “The world will see me too, soon enough.” The child seemed to cock her head, her inquisitive brown eyes gazing up. For a moment, there was quiet, but then her little face shriveled and she let out a healthy wail. She knew nothing of the world, but she knew to fear me.

     As the years went on I lingered closest to her, haunting the conscious of Strand Senior only when I felt my grip on him slipping, when I felt he might surrender to the hopelessness of the task thrust upon him. The task I had guided him to. The Father would know to seek it, the Son would find it, and from the Believer would come the breath with which Chaos would make her call home.

     And always, always, there would be the girl. The girl who I watched as she blossomed and bloom, to whom I whispered at night as she slept, shaping the fabric and the mold of her dreams. I shall be soon to you, I whispered. Soon. Sooner than soon. She grew and aged, her once scrunched face becoming tall and proud and wise, her skin no longer pink but the muted bronze of one with native blood half diluted. Human boys spoke to her in passing, but none of that mattered. None of them mattered, for I had picked for her a man, and he was waiting to find her. There had been necessary human sacrifices to be made that would carve her -our- way to him, the Canadian woman, for instance. As good as dead to him now.

     As good as dead to him now. Just like she was. I had been slipping within the fragments of her mind I had not yet corrupted, the pieces of her still left to the morals and constraints of humanity. She resisted my magic, my pull. She fought well, better than any human I have ever before known. I would like to think such was my doing. That I created that passion within her, that resolve. That my eyes in the darkness formed her fear and her strength both. But in the end, it mattered not who created what, for her defenses failed. I slipped into her mind and let her voice become a hollow protest screaming in my ear. A protest that grew weaker and weaker with every breath I took with those weak sacs of flesh humans call lungs.

     I won the day I dragged our body away from that gas station, and was never seen again. After that, her voice fell almost silent, taking control only once, to write a postcard. It did not matter. I silenced her soon enough, took from she her strength as I had taken her body, let her fade into darkness. Her soul is a memory now, a shriveled thing. I have triumphed. I have begun my collection again. The Reese boy was first, but he was not the last. I devoured the energy and spirit of Sebastian Torres, of Katie Yee, of all of those who had been born marked by my curse. I grew stronger with each passing day, and I could feel the pull towards the East tightening. The Skeptic had convinced the Believer. He had come to understand, she had come to see. My rising now was so close that I could taste the sulfur which would fill the air, the flesh and the souls that I would devour.

     The Believer blows the horn. She cannot resist, I have groomed her for this. She with her curiosity, with her draw. She was most perfect, my crowning achievement. And when her breath filled her lungs Chaos stirred within the Believer wherein she had been for so long dormant. The Skeptic tore the horn from her lungs before the ground could begin to shake. It trembled with my fury and that of the creatures below. The Believer’s eyes widened, she knew what she had unleashed. What was seeking its way out of her skin. Chaos’s black smoke rose through her body and tore, screaming out from her soul. I stepped from the darkness, the shadow of the tent under which I had been hiding, having taken position as a developer for the corporation whom had drawn the Skeptic’s eyes here. Now those eyes were upon me, and I knew his fear and I knew his rage, and I knew his understanding.

     “Run,” I heard him tell the Believer, as she coughed and sputtered and as Chaos became like a great cloud in the sky, unable yet to achieve her true form. She howled in rage and the world was lit in a fire that was as inky black and as horrific as her awesome, terrible shape. I watched them run and for the first time I peeled back my skin, I dropped the meatsuit I had been for too long wearing. Smoke and shadows I pursued them. I would have my vengeance. My screams filled the air, calling to my demon-kin below. Soon, I told them. I surged forward, caught the Skeptic and shoved him against the machine which the humans used to excavate the ground, to unwittingly find that great relic. My fingers wrapped about his throat and I squeezed and squeezed, delighting to watch the blood drain out from his face, to watch the color grow fair as he squirmed in my grasp. I could touch him now, in a form not muted by the presence of the human skin I had worn. My fire burst through me, I could feel my hand heating and knew I should soon taste his soul, his delicious soul.

     Behind me, there was a crash. I gave a great and terrible scream as a light as bright and as terrible as that of the true force of the morning sun ripped open the air and tore through my form, pulling me apart like so many knives piercing my body. I glanced back to see the horn in shattered pieces, and the vindication in the Believer's face. Throwing myself upon her, I gathered all of my energy. I would taste her spirit before I went, I would drag her to Hell with me. Her hands scramble in the sand, seeking purchase as the Skeptic behind us crumbles, searching for the breath I stole from him. The Believer’s hands close, I think she may be surrendering. For a moment, I can almost feel my glorious victory over she, can almost touch the hand of death clawing at her own.

     Her hand raises. She slices me through with a shattered piece of the Horn. I can only give a noise of surprise, can only scream in pain before I am torn apart truly now, before my being falls back and bursts to flames, and I am returned to that which I once was.

     The Greeks called me Nyx.


End file.
